Still waiting

After the euphoria of Friday, I'm now back down to earth having not heard anything from either Fife Mitsubishi or Mitsubishi head office since the letter telling me someone would contact me. I suppose the wording they used ('in the coming days') was suitably vague.

Meanwhile I have to work out how I'm going to transport two adults, three children and a computer packed in three large boxes to my mother's house on Saturday, when I cannot fold away the rear seats to make a boot...

A response!

Hallelujah!

Today I got a letter from the Customer Services Manager at Mitsubishi, sent in response to my letter to the Managing Director. It's taken almost a month since I first contacted them but finally a little bit of action - I say a little bit because all this letter promises is that customer services will 'discuss [the] situation' with the service manager at Fife Mitsubishi, so I'm not holding my breath for a rapid solution.

Watch this space for further developments!

Customer service? Don't make me laugh!

So where to go from here?

Fife Mitsubishi had made it clear that if we wanted our car repaired we would have to continue to make all the effort and cover the cost. To me this just wasn't acceptable because we'd already spent a significant amount of time and money driving nearly 250 miles taking the car in for repair when the fault was theirs in the first place.

I decided to contact the head office of Mitsubishi, The Colt Car Company in Cirencester, hoping they would be able to help me. This is where I wish I had the wit and humour of Jeremy Clarkson to describe what rapidly became a bit of a farce!

I first contacted head office on 24 January 2007 and was told that if I emailed details of my complaint to them they would intervene with the dealership on my behalf. Great, I thought, and sent off an email with an attachment detailing our experiences over the last 6 months.

A week later (30 January 2007) I had heard nothing from head office so I phoned them again and was told they couldn't find my email on the system so could I send it again, so I did.

The next day (31 January 2007) I phoned to check what was happening and was told my email would be allocated to an advisor that day. I asked if someone could contact me that day to say how they would help, after all a week had gone past since I'd last been in touch with Fife Mitsubishi and I felt the momentum was fading from my complaint.

The next day (1 February 2007), having heard nothing, I phoned again and spoke to Shane. He told me Melanie would be handling my case. I was told she'd phone me after 2pm. She didn't.

The next day (2 February 2007) I phoned again and spoke to Luke, who told me Melanie would phone me back. She didn't. I felt a bit of a pattern was emerging.

On 6 February 2007 I phoned again and spoke to Shane. He said Melanie was not in that day. I got rather impatient at this point and asked that please would someone deal with my case! Shane said he'd look into it and managed to find both my emails on their system.

Later that afternoon I got an email from Shane. He'd spoken to Fife Mitsubishi but the information in the email that they'd sent back to him bore very little relation to what had actually happened and as far as they were concerned the matter was closed. I was a bit puzzled by this so I phoned Shane and discovered that he hadn't actually read the attachments to my emails which outlined the problems before he'd phoned Fife Mitsubishi! I could hardly believe this. How exactly do you solve a customer's problem without first finding out what the problem is?!

I sent the email again, FAO Shane this time, and asked him to get back to me promptly. Needless to say, he didn't.

On 8 February 2007 I phoned again and spoke to Shane. There was the usual delay while he tried to find my emails on their system and then he said he hadn't received the email I sent on 6 February. I asked him to look at the attachments to the original two emails. He said Melanie was dealing with my case. I said Melanie 'dealing with it' appear to involve doing nothing as she had never contacted me. I asked to speak to his supervisor. She was apparently on the phone but he said he'd ask her to call me.

Amazingly, Shane's supervisor, Nadine Hayward, did call me. Excited by this show of interest I explained that I had been struggling to get her team to respond to my complaint. I outlined the problem briefly but explained that all the information was in the attachments to my emails. She said she'd look into it and get back to me that afternoon. But, yes, you've guessed it, that's the last I heard from Nadine.

On 13 February 2007 I phoned and asked to speak to Nadine, but was told she wasn't in the office that day. I left my number and requested that she call me tomorrow.

After that call I felt enough was enough. This was a ridiculous situation. It was now almost three weeks since I'd first contacted customer services and they'd still not, as far as I knew, even read my complaint, far less resolved it. I rang again and asked to speak to the most senior person in customer services. This turned out to be Russell Stanley, who was just going into a meeting that was expected to last about an hour. I asked that he call me back that afternoon. I'm still waiting - it's now 22 February 2007.

On 14 February 2007 I wrote a letter to the Managing Director of The Colt Company. I'm stiill waiting for a response to that too.

What on earth do I do now?

The last straw

Monday 15 January 2007
Spoke to Mike at Fife Mitsubishi again. He was quite helpful and arranged for someone to come and pick up the Grandis and take it to Fife Mitsubishi for full assessment and repair. I explained how fed up we were that the problem had still not been resolved (6 months after having bought the car) and that we really needed to get it sorted out once and for all. Once again I said that I thought that both rear seats would have to be replaced.

I also explained that we bought a 7-seater car for a reason and that we really need a 7-seater courtesy car as we are involved in school runs with up to 5 children and this repair could take several days. Mike said they'd come and collect car on Thursday (18 January) at about 9.30am and leave us a 7-seater Ford Galaxy courtesy car.

Thursday 18 January 2007
This was a very snowy day and Mike called to say he thought we should rearrange the collection of the car for next Tuesday (23 January). This seemed sensible as the weather conditions were pretty poor.

Tuesday 23 January 2007
Instead of coming at 9.30am with a 7-seater courtesy car the Fife Mitsubishi mechanic turned up at 11am with a 5-seater, just as I was about to leave on a school run to pick up 4 children! I couldn't rearrange the school run at such short notice so we said he couldn't take the car that day.

Mike from Fife Mitsubishi phoned after I got back from my school run and said he had spoken to Alan Walker and they had decided that they would not come and pick up the car again. If we wanted the repairs done we would have to bring the car to them.

I just felt this was unreasonable and went back on the arrangement made previously with Mike. Alan Walker did not appreciate that the problems we were having were things that should have been rectified before the car was sold to us. We had been sold a car that did not do what it was advertised to do. Fife Mitsubishi had had plenty of opportunity to repair the seats but instead we were having to spend money to take the car to the garage again, with no apology and certainly no offer of compensation.

To summarise, we have a car in which we cannot fold away the rear seats because the head rests have been forced and jammed into place - a supposed repair to fix the fact that when we bought the car the head rests would not go into the seats!

I'll finish here with three Mitsubishi quotes:

Of course, in addition to buying a vehicle which should provide you with many years of trouble-free motoring, you are also buying from a company which is totally committed to providing the best possible customer service…

Mitsubishi website

I've got more important things to worry about than your car

Source: Alan Walker, Fife Mitsubishi

That's what you have to expect when you buy a second-hand car

Source: Alan Walker, Fife Mitsubishi

New year, but no new seats

You can probably guess what happened on 4 January...

Thursday 4 January 2007
No phonecall from Alan.

Monday 8 January 2007
I phoned Fife Mitsubishi to find out why they hadn't phoned me to arrange the assessment/repair to seat headrests. Alan was off sick so I spoke with Mike, who was very helpful and arranged for a mechanic to come and fix the broken headrest on Friday. I tried to explain again that I thought the problem was more fundamental than a broken clip and that the seats would probably have to be replaced completely but yet again my concerns were not taken seriously.

Friday 12 January 2007
Mechanic came and replaced the broken clip. We asked if problems with putting the headreats in and out were common and he said most people just didn't put the headrests in! Not a terribly satisfactory solution in my opinion!

Saturday 13 January 2007
Checked the headrests. Still can't get them out and the clip round the hole is coming away from the seat cover again on both seats.

By this time I really was completely fed up with the whole situation. We still had a car that did not function properly. One of the attractions of the Grandis was its really easy system for putting the two rear seats up and down, but we hadn't been able to do that in all the six months that we'd owned our car!

I decided to give Fife Mitsubishi one more chance to resolve the problem once and for all.

Lifecycle of Mitsubishi car = 18 months?

Nearly a month went by without having to take the car for repair, but just when we thought all the problems had been sorted...

Saturday 16 December 2006
Bought our Christmas tree today and went to put down the rear seats for the first time since they'd been 'repaired'. My husband couldn't get the headrests out at first but after a lot of effort and brute force eventually got one out, but in the process the clip around the hole in the top of the seat cover came off and broke. The other headrest just wouldn't budge. I checked the manual to see if we were doing anything wrong, but it simply says 'To fold down rear seats, remove headrests.' Just like that!

Instead of actually fixing the rear headrests when the seat covers were replaced, it seems they have just been jammed into place.

Monday 18 December 2006
Phoned Fife Mitsubishi to tell them of the latest problem with headrests. I spoke to Alan Walker (manager), who wasn't in the slightest bit interested and told me this is what I should expect having bought a second-hand car. I thought this was an extraordinary statement. Does he really mean that after 18 months you should expect a Mitsubishi car to start falling apart?

He thinks he's given us 110% service since we bought the car because the faults have been fixed - except clearly they haven't been fixed! He doesn't seem to appreciate that we are not happy because the faults should not have been there in the first place and yet we have had to pay for the cost of driving to and from the garage numerous times for repairs to be done, not to mention the time cost and the inconvenience of having being given substandard courtesy cars.

I agreed with Alan that there was not really time to sort this before Christmas (I suspect both the rear seats will need to be replaced completely). Alan said he'd put it in the diary to phone me on 4 January 2007 to book the car in for assessment/repair.

Cracking windscreen (literally!)

So now we had to get the crack in the windscreen, which was growing by the day, repaired.

Thursday 23 November 2006
Phoned garage at 12ish to find out when they were coming to repair windscreen and was told that the windscreen repair company would be at our house about 1.30/2pm and would take about 1.5 hours to do the repair. I rearranged my afternoon to accommodate this. About 15 minutes later the garage phoned back to say the repair couldn't be done after all as the replacement windscreen was cracked!

Windscreen repair was rescheduled for 24 November at lunchtime.

Friday 24 November 2006
Windscreen replacement company turned up to replace windscreen at 11am, when my husband was out in the car, having been told by Fife Mitsubishi that they were coming at lunchtime. Managed to persuade the repair chap to stick around for 10 minutes until my husband returned. Interestingly, the guy doing the repair said that the crack was caused by a manufacturing fault in which the clips holding it in place were too tight. He'd seen this before in Mitsubishis.

We now thought that we might be done with repairs and problems, and resigned ourselves to not getting any apology or compensation from Fife Mitsubishi but at least the car seemed finally to be in full working order ... or so we thought.

'I've got much more important things to worry about than your car.'

As you can imagine, by this time we were getting a bit fed up at having to keep taking our 'new' car back to the garage for repairs. So we thought we'd try and talk to the manager and explain that we were not happy.

Monday 20 November 2006
We phoned Fife Mitsubishi to complain that the scratch on the paintwork had not been repaired and tell them about the cracked windscreen, which we thought probably happened when the dashboard was being replaced. We were told to bring the car in so the mechanic could assess the crack in the windscreen. We also arranged to speak to the senior member of staff (Alan Walker, manager). My husband drove to Cupar in the afternoon and showed the mechanic the windscreen, and he realised that it was not caused by an impact or accident. The garage agreed to replace the windscreen without charge.

My husband also spoke with Alan Walker to tell him that we felt we had been sold a substandard car and that we were not very happy with the after-sales service we had received so far.

At this point I think it would be interesting to look at what Fife Mitsubishi say about their after-sales service on their website:

We recognise that, as our customer, you are the most important aspect of our business and our success depends upon our ability to provide you with outstanding levels of lifetime care. We also hope that the level of service you receive at our dealership contributes to the enjoyment you may expect from buying and owning a Mitsubishi.

I have to say that this is not quite our experience! During the brief conversation he had with Alan Walker, my husband was made to feel that he was in the way and Alan was really not interested at all in the difficulties we had experienced, to quote 'I've got much more important things to worry about than your car.'

Bit of a constrast between this attitude and the website quote, don't you think?

However, as I said he did finally agreed to replace the windscreen free of charge but would not even entertain the idea of compensation for our time and costs for journeys to and from the garage to repair problems that should not have been present in the car when we bought it.

We were given a time for getting the windscreen repaired (23 November) and it was suggested that the scratched paintwork could be repaired at the next service as time would have to be booked for this with the bodyshop.

Another round trip of 38 miles.

The rattle becomes a crack

Nearly a whole month passed before we could face Fife Mitsubishi again but the rattle wasn't getting any better.

Friday 10 November 2006
We took the Grandis in to Fife Mitsubishi, having booked the car in to get the rattle in the dashboard sorted out. The mechanic got into the car for a test drive and before the car had even been reversed out of the parking space he identified the problem as being in the heater box. He said this was a big job, a really big job (wonder if this is why no-one had spotted it before?!) and he was already working on another Grandis with the same problem.

The repair involved removing then replacing the entire dashboard, and we were told it would take till Tuesday 14 November to fix. We also had told the service department in advance of a scratch on the paintwork near the petrol cap that need to be repaired and asked for this to be done during this visit, which we were told it would be.

We were given a Honda CR-V courtesy car, which had not been valeted since being traded in and smelt very unpleasantly of dog. Again it had next to no petrol in it so we had to put some in to get home. Another round trip of 34 miles.

On 13 November we phoned Fife Mitsubishi to ask if the Grandis was ready as there was a chance it would have been repaired by that afternoon. We were informed that it would be Wednesday (15 November) at least before it would be fixed.

Thursday 16 November 2006
Fife Mitsubishi phoned in the morning to say the Grandis was fixed and it was brought back to us about lunchtime, another 17 miles worth of our petrol. Our joy at getting our car back at last and handing back the horribly smelly CR-V was short-lived: the scratch near the petrol cap had not been repaired and a crack had appeared in the bottom corner (passenger side) of the front windscreen.

One month later...

Having got one seat cover replaced, we then had to wait a month for the other one to be done...

Thursday 19 October 2006
The Grandis was picked up from our house and taken to Fife Mitsubishi for the other rear seat cover to be replaced. Another round trip of 34 miles. We were given a Chrysler neon courtesy car, again with only a drop of petrol in it so more expense for us. This car proved very difficult to start and the key for the petrol cap was broken, making it almost impossible to put petrol in it. We hadn't been told about this and my husband had to phone Fife Mitsubishi from the petrol station forecourt for help on how to put in the petrol!

The Grandis was brought back to us in the afternoon. We had told the garage again that there was still a rattle in the dashboard. This time they had apparently removed, cleaned and replaced the storage compartment in the top of the dashboard. Despite having driven the car 17 miles back to us, they appear not to have noticed that the rattle was still there.

The good(ish) news was that the headrests were now both inserted in the rear seats!

The story begins...

Haven't heard anything from Mitsubishi head office since yesterday when I sent them my email detailing our complaint for the third time and asked if they would actually read it this time. So, let's begin the story of our Mitsubishi Grandis...

We decided to purchase a Mitsubishi Grandis in July 2006 because we have three small children and do joint school runs so this 7-seater car seemed ideal, especially as it doesn't look like a bus.

Tuesday 18 July 2006
Took possession of a very smart ice-blue Mitsubishi Grandis Elegance, having paid Fife Mitsubishi a large sum of money and handed over our old car.

Wednesday 19 July 2006
Put up the third row of seats (they had been stored flat when we bought the car) and discovered that the seats were not the correct kind for this model (they had a different type of leather and different coloured stitching) and we couldn't get the headrests into the top of the seats, in fact one seat didn't even have holes in the top to fit the headrest into. I immediately phoned Fife Mitsubishi, told them of the problem and arranged to go in a couple of days later to let them see it as I was passing that way anyway.

Monday 24 July 2006
Took the car in to Fife Mitsubishi to show the mechanic the problem with the rear seats. The salesman we originally purchased the car from, Brian Clark, agreed that they should be replaced under warranty and said he would arrange for the necessary warranty paperwork to be completed to allow this to be done.

Thursday 21 September 2006 (yes, that's almost two months to sort out the warranty paperwork!)
The warranty paperwork finally sorted out, the Grandis was booked in on this date for repair. On this occasion only one seat was repaired, i.e. the cover was replaced and the headrest pushed into place. I don’t know why only one seat was repaired; the garage had had two months to order the parts. We took the car to Fife Mitsubishi and it was brought back to us in the afternoon. We were given a Mitsubishi Space Wagon as a courtesy car and had to put petrol in it. We couldn’t fit the three car seats needed for our children in the back seat of this car. When leaving our Grandis at the garage we told the mechanic about a persistent rattle in the dashboard. On getting the car back, we asked about the rattle and were told, ‘It’s probably the CDs in the glovebox’.

So we now had a car with one rear seat with a headrest jammed into place and one rear seat without a headrest, and a persistant rattle in the dashboard. We'd also had a 68-mile round trip for which we had to pay for the petrol and had had to cope without being able to put all our children in the courtesy car at once.

*****************
Back to today and still no word from Mitsubishi head office...

What is this blog about?

We bought a second-hand (18 months old, 11,000 miles on the clock) Mitsubishi Grandis from Fife Mitsubishi in Cupar last July (2006) and now, 6 months later, it is still not in the condition it should have been when we bought it.

Having tried and failed to get satisfaction and some understanding of the problem from Fife Mitsubishi, who quite frankly don't seem to care, I finally contacted Mitsubishi head office in Cirencester on 24 January. Today, two weeks later, I had to email my complaint to Mitsubishi head office for the third time because they still haven't read it, although they have gone ahead and contacted Fife Mitsubishi without knowing what the problem was!

Have we been unlucky with both the car and our experience of Mitsubishi after-sales service? That's what this blog should find out.

Are there any other disgruntled Grandis owners out there? What are your experiences?

I am going to set out our experience over the coming entries in this blog (not all at once so you don't get too bored!) and see if I can get to the end before Mitsubishi decide to resolve the issue!